Your Yoga Class: Public Space or Private Space?

“If you are teaching a class, then step onto your mat, and take a moment at the front of the class to silently state your intention for the period. Recall the joy that you feel from your practice and your teaching, and let that be the foundation of all that you say and do as you teach this class. Know that you are guiding yourself and your students within a sacred circle.”Judith Lasater

“Revenge porn” is when people post explicit images of ex-partners online to humiliate them following a break-up. This has to be the ultimate betrayal of trust, when what was considered an intensely private moment, is put in the public domain. Another example of this is that of a young woman, dashing between appointments, eating a sandwich on the tube. Opposite her, a middle-age man uploads photos of her eating on to a site called: Women eating on the tube. What was a private moment becomes a public side-show.

What has this got to do with yoga? I hear you ask, and the immediate connection isn’t obvious. Although nowadays, with the event of social media, we are all negotiating new territory as we are faced with decisions about what should be shared, and, what should remain a private moment. The above are extreme examples, but for all of us nowadays privacy has become an issue. The question I’d like to explore in this blog is: should your yoga class be a Facebook free zone, or, if you attend a class or workshop, are you fair game, and, you should expect to see yourself later on Facebook or YouTube?

Recently I attended an annual yoga congress. During the introductory session the Chair, on the stage, addressed the ninety or so seated delegates and said: “Michael will be going round to all the sessions and taking photos for our Facebook page.” Then she hesitated, and added, as an afterthought: “If you don’t want to be photographed can you put your hand up now.” I looked around no one else had put their hand up so I didn’t either. I didn’t want to be photographed whilst I was doing yoga, but it just felt too embarrassing to be the only delegate putting her hand up to object.

In this blog I will outline the arguments in favour of maintaining the yoga class as a private, rather than a public space.

Let’s think about what we value about our time on the yoga mat. For me it is a time when I come home to myself. I am consciously creating a safe space where I am able to let go, relax, unwind, explore, release, open up, stretch and strengthen up. It is a safe, healing space both physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. When I teach a yoga class I draw on this experience, and I am aiming to recreate this safe, healing space for my students, so that they too can enjoy this sense of unfolding. When we are on social media we create an edited version of ourselves; we want to project the best possible image of ourselves. Of course this can be fun and at the same time it creates pressure. In yoga we have a concept called pratyahara which involves a conscious withdrawal from the world of the senses. Yoga is experienced from the inside out. In the everyday world we are often judged by our outward appearance. In contrast, with yoga it is so refreshing, instead of worrying about how I look, I explore how does it feel to be me? At its best we can let go of creating an image and simply be with ourselves as we are in all our beauty and imperfection. What a relief!Of course this journey inwards is interrupted and punctuated if there is a photographer in the class constantly taking photos to upload to Facebook later. The atmosphere of the yoga class has changed, from a private space where I draw inwards, to a public space where again I am presenting an image to the world. We learn by making mistakes. If your yoga class is a private space then you are safe to get it wrong; not many of us want to make a complete asana out of ourselves and for it to be recorded for posterity! This isn’t to say that as yoga teachers we shouldn’t use social media, but perhaps etiquette requires that the photography slot is separate to the actual class itself.

The driven-doing mode can take many forms. A while back I was doing a blog on my own home yoga practice. I would find myself whilst doing my yoga thinking: that’s good I’ll put that in my blog. The doing mind likes to harvest experience and to invest it to increase the dividends. The being mode simply allows us to come home to ourselves, and our experience, and to live our lives breath by breath. It’s that same driven-doing mode that can egg teachers on to harvest the workshops and classes they teach for good images to put on their Facebook page, or clips for YouTube. It’s a case of killing two birds with one stone: you teach a class and then you put the images on social media. At congress I attended a yoga-theory lecture and discussion group. At one point the lecturer launches in to a monologue, impressed by his own rhetoric, he stops, and turns on a mobile audio recorder: “I’m much better at talking than writing he says”, with just a hint of embarrassment, “so I’m going to record this.” Once the recorder is on, personally, I feel a bit inhibited about joining in with this discussion now; do I want my disjointed and half-formed ideas to be on his website or YouTube later? By making this a public arena, (without asking our consent), he hadn’t created the safe teaching situation that I needed in order to feel confident to learn by making mistakes, as I grappled with new ideas and concepts.

Sand Mandala

Perhaps we can learn here from Buddhist monks who take five days to painstakingly create a sand mandala and then, once it is completed, they destroy it. The mandala is created in a deep state of meditation and then is ritually destroyed and put in to flowing water as a way of sharing the blessings with all beings and as a gift to mother earth. It is a recognition of the impermanence of all things. The actual act of creation, and the spirit it is done in, are more important than a beautiful end product. Maybe our urge to get something up on Facebook, after a class or yoga workshop, is an understandable desire to see a tangible end product for the fruits of our labour.So what I am saying is that when you teach your yoga class, just teach the class, let go of seeing it as a marketing opportunity. That’s not to say that you don’t need to market your class, we live in the real world; it’s just that teaching and marketing are different activities. With marketing your eye is always on future goals; with teaching you are in the present and your students will appreciate your presence. If a student comes to your class and you can create a space that enables her to get in touch with that peaceful place within, then that is pure gold dust, and when she tells others about your class that is the best marketing you can hope for. Just teach the class and let the other stuff take care of itself.

"The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away"Pablo Picasso

What a beautifully written essay.I totally agree with you; yoga should not be a spectator sport.

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Amelie

30/9/2014 01:41:01 pm

Thank you for this awesome article! I had mixed feelings about this; I once left a class because a friend of the teacher was taking pictures without asking our consent before hand. I came to yoga with huge problems regarding self-esteem because of sexual abuse in the past. I could not handle the feeling of beeing observed, I felt violated in such an intimated moment.
I was angry about this situation but mostly angry about myself because I had the feeling I had hurt the teacher...
I live on the contryside so there are not much teacher around. I now practice yoga alone in my house with a video of Mark Darby and I feel more awesome each and everyday!

Thanks Amelie. Leaving the class when you were feeling violated sounds like an act of courage and self-care to me. It's hard though isn't it when self-criticism kicks in. So glad to hear that your own yoga practice is going strong :-)

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